


The Art of Communication

by JewelQueen



Series: A Drabble A Day! [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deaf Clint Barton, Everybody Speaks Their First Language, Gen, Language Barrier, Loki is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, POV Clint Barton, Slight Ableism, Team Bonding, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Gets a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony is Italian, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 09:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10636971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JewelQueen/pseuds/JewelQueen
Summary: In which Loki saves the day (but really just makes things worse) by being the villain (but really mostly a jerk) and the Avengers have to deal with the aftermath (but really it's just about making Tony feel better).





	

**Author's Note:**

> Basically just the combination of my love of any team reverting to their first language with that one person they all thought spoke only English, and the fact that Tony grimaces at Hammer when he attempts to speak French for 'cheese' and says "God, that's so awful" (followed by the scene in which he carries on a conversation in French) in IM 2.
> 
> I debated giving Steve Irish, but the story is smoother when their leader speaks the de facto language and also given that Bruce doesn't like to talk much and Clint is too angry half the time to speak to anyone but Natasha. All language translations are at the bottom and from Google basically, so I apologize if I messed something up.

Loki was a bit of a jerk. He wasn’t quite a supervillain, not anymore, but he strayed far from what anyone would call a hero. Instead, he was living up to his name of Trickster and devised some manner of prank or distraction of just enough destructiveness that the Avengers would have to be called out.

Today, it was all a diversion in order to cast a spell on the group.

“Alright, what the hell was that?” Hawkeye asked the comms, giving one last effort to track Loki from his last known position. No luck. The bastard had teleported away without a trace.

“...Do you mind repeating that, Hawkeye?” he heard Captain America respond.

He furrowed his brow and slung his bow behind him. “What do you mean, I’m speaking plain English,” But he paid attention to his words this time and noticed something off. He had a slur to them, just like when he was--

“Клинт, я не понимаю, что ты говоришь,” was Natasha’s unmistakable input. He swore under his breath.

“Vinr! Ek njóta vætki vita ykkarr!” Thor boomed.

“If I may speak on Sir’s behalf, it appears as if Loki has reverted everyone to their first language and erased our ability to communicate with one another,” JARVIS took over the comms, echoing what he assumed was the same phrase in everyone else’s native tongue.

Fuck, this wasn’t good.

~*~*~

Fury angrily rubbed the bridge of his forehead, no doubt a stress headache blooming. “You mean to tell me my entire team has to be disbarred because they can’t communicate with one another?”

Everyone remained silent. Thor was etching out his runic alphabet with an impatient scowl, Stark was tapping away at his phone doing god knows what, Natasha was silent and still in a way that she hadn’t been since he first met her, and Banner just looked completely exhausted and a little green still. This meeting was going nowhere except on everyone’s nerves.

“Well, sir,” Steve spoke up eventually. “Technically, Banner, Barton, Stark and I can still work together since we all speak English,” he glanced briefly at Clint. “Mostly,”

He glared at Steve. “Just because I’m deaf,” he said slowly, signing as he spoke though he was pretty sure no one else spoke ASL. “Doesn’t mean my English is any less than yours,”

“I meant no offense,” Steve returned, hands up placatingly. “It’s just a little hard to understand, is all. In a battle, it could be a distraction,”

“Fuck you, Steve! It’s not my fault you can’t understand me,”

“Стоп, Хок,” Natasha whispered at his side, squeezing his arm. “Это трудно для всех.”

Even though he didn’t know her words, he knew her well enough to figure out what she meant and took a deep breath. She nodded and gave one last squeeze.

Fury watched them impassively. “Well, now that everyone has had their little tantrum, what do you propose we do about this? Because I am not hiring translators for everyone,”

Tony cleared his throat, preparing to say something for the first time this meeting. “Jarvis? S’il-te plaît?” Clint narrowed his eyes at that. But what did he know about the high-life? Maybe Stark grew up learning English and a little bit of French at the same time. It was suspicious, but maybe his instincts were wrong. 

He ignored the sensible part telling him that his instincts were never wrong, and purposefully avoided glancing at Natasha since he knew that if he did, he’d see the same thoughts behind her eyes. He desperately wanted to have as little evidence towards doubt as possible because that just meant it would be harder to overcome this splintering. Harder to deny that Loki had found a weak spot.

“Sir has already begun work on a translator similar to the All-Speak for everyone. He proposes that Doctor Banner, Mister Barton and Mister Rogers apply their efforts in locating Loki while he works on the device,” JARVIS spoke, his weird echo into other languages making his hearing aids itch.

“Да, я согласен,” Natasha said with a jerky nod.

Clint rolled his eyes. “Whatever,”

“Minn bróðir munu æva bera skaða,” Thor said suddenly, voice dark with warning.

“I promise, Thor,” Steve said, keeping his body language unthreatening and earnest. “That is not what we intend,”

He didn’t stop bristling even after JARVIS translated for him. He just called Mjolnir to his hand and stormed out. Tony stood up, buttoned his suit, took the paper containing Thor’s alphabet and gave a sloppy salute on his way out.

“We done here?” Clint asked Fury, feeling antsy after everything that had happened.

Fury sighed and waved them off. He didn’t waste another moment and put a good amount of distance between him and the others, but especially the Captain because right now? Right now he was too angry to be a part of anyone’s team. 

Being deaf hadn’t been an issue since he was a kid and his asshole dad made the same kind of comments that Steve did. About how he was stupid because he couldn’t speak as well as everyone else because he learned everything by lip-reading. About how if no one could understand him, then what good was he? He thought he was over this, but maybe hearing had made him go soft. Maybe getting his hearing aids and passing as a non-disabled person made him forget just how cruel the world really is to people like him. Maybe--

He swung a fraction of a second after he felt a light touch on his arm. Natasha flipped backwards to avoid him, but even after recognizing her, he aimed a low kick to knock her off her feet. She side-stepped, made to feint a jab to his stomach, but he caught her other fist and spun her into the wall. He grinned and knew she was enjoying this too, especially after she stomped the inside of his foot and twisted her way out of his hold. They parried each other’s blows, too familiar with one another even with this manic angry energy fueling their movements to get the upper hand so easily. If he caught her in a headlock, she would run up the wall and throw him to the ground. If she knocked him to the ground with a scissor kick, he would flip himself back up and send her a jab in her side. Eventually, those killer legs of hers wound up at his throat in her signature move until he was on his back, her fists up and ready at his head.

“Лучше?” she rumbled, chest heaving.

He grinned at her and yielded. “Better,” She got up and offered her hand. He clasped it with a laugh. “You always manage to get the drop on me,”

“Я был Убийцей дольше, мой ястреб,” she said, with the same smirk as always.

He swung his arm around her shoulders and let her direct them out. “Yeah, yeah, Nat, you win,”

~*~*~

It turns out, while Loki is just as difficult to track down as always when he doesn’t want to be found, Tony is rather good at making tech even if it has to do with translating multiple languages simultaneously.

“How’d you manage to do it?” Bruce asked as they all sat down to eat take-out.

Tony shrugged. “Simple enough. Jarvis already narrowed down the languages we all speak when I had him translate for everybody. So I just programmed all those languages into our little hearing aids. There’s a few hiccups, say, if someone tries to speak something other than what I’ve downloaded or there’s a translating error within the language itself,”

“Doesn’t sound so simple to me,” Steve muttered into his food. Clint snorted. He definitely felt better now that everybody was on the same page and a little vindictive part of him was glad that Steve had to deal with having Stark’s modified hearing aid in at all times. Let’s see how he likes it.

“Verily, Anthony! Replicating the All-Speak, even in this form, is worthy of accolades,” Thor continued, munching happily at his large meal.

“Magari, Ho ha fatto un sacco più complicato cose nel mio sonno,” Tony said, fishing around for more chicken under his rice.

“Tony,” Natasha said slowly.

“Che cosa di fino, Nat?” he mumbled around a bite.

“I think you’re having a hiccup,” Clint finished for her.

“Sciocchezza, ho scaricato Francese. Ho ha significato che Thor e suo vecchio lingua--”

“You’re speaking Italian,” she interrupted. He stopped dead, dropping his fork and looking pale.

“Ho hanno non parlate, er, je ne-merda, lo sono mi dispiace,” he babbled in haste, scrambling to run away to his lab.

Before anyone could follow him, the alarm went off signaling the call to assemble. No one was surprised when Tony didn’t show up in the Iron Man suit.

“Loki!” Thor shouted as soon as they arrived, which, really, who was surprised by that?

“Stand down, Loki, or we will be forced to take offensive measures,” Steve picked up, raising his shield with a hard glint to his eyes.

“Ah, I see you’ve managed to find a way to work around my spell,” the bastard said, his eyes darting towards the surrounding Avengers. “But I believe one of you is missing...tsk. And here I had hoped it would bring you all together,”

“What have you done to Tony?” Natasha asked, stepping a foot forward. Clint pulled his line taut, waiting for her signal. He wouldn’t relax until she stood down, even if he was surprised by her aggressiveness. But, then again, this was Loki after all. Stark wasn’t the center of the universe, no matter how much he made it seem like it.

“Oh,” he purred at her and his fingers twitched. “I haven’t done anything to the Man of Iron, not anymore that of done to you. But I find it interesting that he is more broken by it than anyone else. Yes, thank you for that knowledge,”

Natasha winced faintly, a scrunching of her nose and Clint just let go. Loki waved and his arrow disintegrated--but not before noticing that he would have hit his eye had it stayed on path. Huh, that’s a bit more cruel than usual.

“Fix him,” he stated, stringing another arrow. “I won’t miss next time.” The Hulk roared in agreement.

Loki narrowed his eyes, inspecting him closely, before smirking and shrugged. “Very well, but I can only undo what _I_ have caused, nothing more,”

Another wave involving some hand gestures that looked like gibberish ASL and a green mist overcame them all. Involuntarily, he felt it slither up his nose and shivered at the intrusion before hearing something click in his head and began gasping for breath. But at least he wasn’t the only one.

A portal opened and Loki took a step towards it. “Do not mistake me, I have broken the hold my spell has on each of you, but some things even I cannot fix, little ant-vengers,”

Thor reached out and grabbed his elbow before he could fully escape. Loki hissed at him. “Do not think I do not know what this means, brother,” Thor said hurriedly. “And I thank you for it,”

Loki jerked away. “I have no idea what has gotten into your head, but I sincerely hope your stupid doesn’t affect the others,” he said, but Thor only smiled, so he scoffed and disappeared.

Natasha yanked out Stark’s earpiece and turned towards Clint. “Say something,”

“You know I hate it when you give me orders, I’m the senior agent,” he quipped, smiling at her genuine grin.

“So, that’s it?” Steve asked, hesitantly pulling out his aid.

“Aye, Loki does not lie about his spell-casting,” Thor confirmed. “Anthony’s tech is not required any longer,”

“Speaking of, I’d like to ask what that was all about,” Natasha said, whirling around on Thor who had the smarts to look sheepish. “But we need to get back to Stark,”

“Oh, it’s Stark, now, is it?” he teased. She rolled her eyes and shoved her hand into his face.

“Just pilot the quinjet, Clint,”

*~*~*

Natasha had recommended that she go alone but everyone was on the same page for once and she huffed, but let them follow her as she bypassed JARVIS’s security and let them into the workshop.

“Monsieur, vous avez une compagnie,” JARVIS spoke up.

Tony whirled around and it was only his extensive training that made him remain stoic and unflinching. They couldn’t have been gone longer than an hour, 2 hours tops, and Stark looked like a mess. His eyes were red from trying to hold in tears he would bet and he was disheveled like he had gone rounds with his suit. He immediately covered his face and hunched in on himself.

“Tony…” Bruce whispered, but his voice seemed to send a shock through him.

“Ho n-non desidera loro, Jay, ho non desidera loro a sapere!” he said quietly, and Clint’s heart hurt hearing it.

“Je crains que cela ne soit inévitable, monsieur,”

“Jarvis, tell him that the spell is broken,” Natasha muttered.

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Tony stumbled into a seat like a puppet with its strings cut. “Allora, lo è solo mi cioè rotto,” he sighed.

Thor appeared confused. “I do not understand, friend, the spell is broken I am sure of it. Why do you continue to speak in another tongue?”

Clint figured it out probably just a second after Natasha if her glance meant anything. “It’s a mental block,” he said. Tony confirmed with a short nod. Bruce sucked in a harsh breath.

“You were raised speaking French and Italian?” Steve spoke, puzzling out loud.

“Howard--” Tony began, faltering. “Mia madre...Jarvis, per favore,”

“As you wish, Sir,” Jarvis finished, bringing up holographic images of Maria Stark and Edwin and Ana Jarvis. “Sir was primarily raised by these figures, his mother, and you may have guessed, my human inspiration and his wife. Sir’s father did not approve of Tony speaking anything other than English in his presence but relented to his wife’s pleas of teaching him French as an attempt to culturize him. French is the language Sir is most comfortable speaking, after English of course,”  
“Called it,” Clint muttered to himself. Natasha elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to wince.

“So why Italian?” she said, for the rest of the group to hear.

“Sir’s mother spoke Italian in private. She did not account for Sir to pick it up as Sir’s father disapproved whenever she spoke it,” JARVIS finished with a sad air, minimizing the images.

“Howard odiato l'idea che siamo stati nulla ma Americano,” Tony rasped, allowing JARVIS to quietly translate in the background. “Egli amava Maria, ma egli odiava che lei fatto sua _"più grande creazione"_ metà-Americano, rovinato sua immagine perfetta della Americano famiglia, sai? Quando essi, quando lei è morto...ecco tutto quello che avevo lasciato di lei. Lei è morto, e ho non l'ho fatto dire che ho l'amavo nel lingua lei amava,”

“Tony,” Steve said, slowly making his way towards him and gently laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay,”

“Да, Антошка,” Natasha continued, stepping forward to run her fingers through his hair. If it wasn’t so sad, Clint would laugh at his stupefied expression. “все будет хорошо,” She gave a sharp look to Clint and he sighed.

He plucked out his hearing aids, his normal ones, and strode forward, propping up Tony’s shin so that he met his eyes. He nodded and then took a step back to sign as he spoke, ignoring how grating it must sound without being able to balance it with hearing, “We’ll get over this, dude,”

Clint darted a glance at Steve, but the man just nodded gratefully this time and he felt his own shoulders relax. Bruce joined them silently, awkwardly placing his hand over Tony’s free shoulder, but that earned them a shaky smile from their favorite Mechanic.

“Vinr!” Thor boomed, lifting them all into a startled hug. “Allr munu vel!”

A few minutes passed and Thor finally let them on the ground once more, although no one had quite moved away yet. Tony took a deep breath and laughed faintly, smile a lot less shaky. “Thanks, guys,”

Loki smirked from within the shadows and slipped away. His work was done. They had started to fix what he could not. Perhaps there was hope after all for the so-called Avengers to become the team that Midgard needed.

Until then, he would continue to push them because they needed all the help they could get for the future war coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Клинт, я не понимаю, что ты говоришь -- Clint I don't understand what you're saying.
> 
> Vinr! Ek njóta vætki vita ykkarr -- Friend(s)! I benefit nothing at all to understand of you (I don't have any understanding of you all)
> 
> Стоп, Хок ... Это трудно для всех -- Stop, Hawk, It's hard for everyone.
> 
> S’il-te plaît -- If it pleases you 
> 
> Да, я согласен -- Yes, I agree
> 
> Minn bróðir munu æva bera skaða -- My brother must never bear harm to (My brother must not be harmed)
> 
> Лучше -- Better?
> 
> Я был Убийцей дольше, мой ястреб -- I was the assassin longer, my hawk
> 
> Magari! Ho ha fatto un sacco più complicato cose nel mio sonno -- I wish (vaguely)! I did a lot more complicated things in my sleep.
> 
> Che cosa di fino-- What's up?
> 
> Sciocchezza, ho scaricato Francese. Ho ha significato che Thor e suo vecchio lingua -- Nonsense, I downloaded French. I meant that Thor and his old language...
> 
> Ho hanno non parlate, er, je ne-merda, lo sono mi dispiace -- I have not spoken, er (French I'm not), shit, I'm sorry...
> 
> Monsieur, vous avez une compagnie -- Sir, you have company
> 
> Ho n-non desidera loro, Jay, ho non desidera loro a sapere! -- I don't (stutter) want them, Jay, I don't want them to know
> 
> Je crains que cela ne soit inévitable, monsieur -- It appears as if that is inevitable, sir
> 
> Allora, lo è solo mi cioè rotto -- So, it is just me that's broken
> 
> Mia madre...Jarvis, per favore -- My mother...Jarvis, please
> 
> Howard odiato l'idea che siamo stati nulla ma Americano -- Howard hated the idea that we were anything but American. 
> 
> Egli amava Maria, ma egli odiava che lei fatto sua "più grande creazione" metà-Americano, rovinato sua immagine perfetta della Americano famiglia, sai?  
> \--  
> He loved Maria, but he hated that she made his "greatest creation" half-American, ruined his perfect image of the American family, you know?
> 
> Quando essi, quando lei è morto...ecco tutto quello che avevo lasciato di lei. Lei è morto, e ho non l'ho fatto dire che ho l'amavo nel lingua lei amava  
> \--  
> When they, when she died...that's all I had left of her. She died, and I did not say that I loved her in the language she loved
> 
> Да, Антошка ... все будет хорошо -- Yes, Antoshka (term of endearment) everything will be fine
> 
> Vinr! ... Allr munu vel -- Friend(s)! All will be well
> 
> Up to you what "war" Loki is referring to ;P


End file.
